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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS; (フランス語:Banque des règlements internationaux), BRI) is an international company limited by shares owned by central banks which "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks". The BIS carries out its work through subcommittees, the secretariats it hosts and through an annual general meeting of all member banks. It also provides banking services, but only to central banks and other international organizations. It is based in Basel, Switzerland, with representative offices in Hong Kong and Mexico City. ==History== The BIS was established on May 17, 1930, by an intergovernmental agreement by Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, the United States and Switzerland.〔http://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000280167c31〕〔http://www.bis.org/about/index.htm?l=2〕 The BIS was originally intended to facilitate reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.〔(BIS History - Overview. ) BIS website. Retrieved 2011-02-13.〕 The need to establish a dedicated institution for this purpose was suggested in 1929 by the Young Committee, and was agreed to in August of that year at a conference at The Hague. A charter for the bank was drafted at the International Bankers Conference at Baden-Baden in November, and its charter was adopted at a second Hague Conference on January 20, 1930. According to the charter, shares in the bank could be held by individuals and non-governmental entities. The BIS was constituted as having corporate existence in Switzerland on the basis of an agreement with Switzerland acting as headquarters state for the bank. It also enjoyed immunity in all the contracting states. The evidence had been mounting throughout the war that the BIS had helped the Germans loot assets from occupied countries, including gold rings and other items from labor and prison camp victims.〔http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/banking-with-hitler/〕 The most notorious incident was the Bank of England's transfer to the BIS gold looted by the Nazis after their invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939.'〔http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/43fa3cdc-f934-11e2-86e1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3e6RLZ4n8〕 The fact that top level German industrialists and advisors sat on the BIS board is ample evidence to understand how the BIS was used by Hitler throughout the war, with the help of American, British and French banks. Between 1933 and 1945 the BIS board of directors included Walther Funk, a prominent Nazi official, and Emil Puhl, as well as Hermann Schmitz, the director of IG Farben and Baron von Schroeder, the owner of the J.H. Stein Bank. The Bretton Woods Conference recommended the "liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment".〔United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, ''Final Act'' (London et al., 1944), Article IV.〕 This resulted in the BIS being the subject of a disagreement between the non-governmental U.S. and British delegations. The liquidation of the bank was supported by other European delegates, as well as the United States (including Harry Dexter White, Secretary of the Treasury, and Henry Morgenthau),〔 but opposed by John Maynard Keynes, head of the British delegation. Fearing that the BIS would be dissolved by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Keynes went to Morgenthau hoping to prevent the dissolution, or have it postponed, but the next day the dissolution of the BIS was approved. However, the liquidation of the bank was never actually undertaken. In April 1945, the new U.S. president Harry S. Truman and the British government suspended the dissolution, and the decision to liquidate the BIS was officially reversed in 1948.〔(brief history of the BIS )〕 The BIS was originally owned by both governments and private individuals, since the United States and France had decided to sell some of their shares to private investors. BIS shares traded on stock markets, which made the bank an unusual organization: an international organization (in the technical sense of public international law), yet allowed for private shareholders. Many central banks had similarly started as such private institutions; for example, the Bank of England was privately owned until 1946. In more recent years the BIS has bought back its once publicly traded shares.〔http://www.bis.org/press/p050601.htm〕 It is now wholly owned by BIS members (central banks) but still operates in the private market as a counterparty, asset manager and lender for central banks and international financial institutions.〔http://www.bis.org/banking/finserv.htm〕 Profits from its transactions are used, among other things, to fund the bank's other international activities. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bank for International Settlements」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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